On Sept. 13, a jury found Tuddles, 19, guilty of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and conspiracy for forcing the teen-ager to commit oral sex in an Easton apartment in March 1984. Grifo sentenced him on May 10.

Tuddles' lawyer, Lorenzo Crowe, termed the sentence "extremely harsh" and contended that the court should not have considered his juvenile record when it calculated the time he should serve in jail.

Tuddles said in a letter attached to the petition that he was "scared then and I am scared and sad now.

"Every time I get involved in a peer-pressure situation," Tuddles wrote, "I always reacted backwards, as opposed to a positive manner."